Nautilus
by maddeve
Summary: Six years at the South Pole. Three days in Ba Sing Se. A month in Caldera City. And then, and then: this time, spurred by restless dreams, it's Katara who leaves. It's the Avatar who follows. It's Azula who watches. And it's Zuko who stays, and waits, and counts time by the number of days she's been gone.
1. a powerful bender

_i. a powerful bender_

The heat had been incredible.

The flames had roared higher than the roofs of palace buildings, singeing their lacquered wood and tile; scraps of scorched debris dropped on the violent, haphazard breezes of Azula's flames to litter the endless ground that lay between Katara and Zuko, who was blocking his sister's attacks with poise and efficacy, never moving position.

The heat had rendered Katara, standing some distance behind him, immobile. It had leeched water and salt from her body and the loss of such essentials made her realize—again—what having an opposite element meant, how it _felt—_ it felt like being useless. She'd stood in a fighting stance for about a minute before realizing that there was not enough water in the air, ground, or drainage systems to quench the volumes of deadly fire produced with such force by the two children of the Fire Lord. She could do nothing to help; she would only be able to defend herself should something go wrong, and even then, she would most likely die.

Of course, she had _had_ to help, in the end. Flash and crackle and another kind of screeching terror—Zuko leaping, parallel to the ground, like he had been when he'd pushed her out of the way of falling rock in the Western Air Temple, no, she hadn't forgotten. _Being saved_ was a hollowed-gut feeling, a limb-numbed and impotent anger that she wouldn't ever forget.

And as it turned out, she wasn't useless against Azula's searing, nonsensical rage. The anger had been too big for the lady Fire Lord, and she'd tripped over it; Azula had missed the water beneath her, hadn't taken seriously the chains, hadn't been able to dig for a way out in that muck of thought and desire and desperation that had churned in her head for days, months? who knew.

But even then, so close to blue death and with Zuko twitching in the corner of her eye, the residual heat of his and his sister's death match pressed down on Katara, the weight of a thousand suicide-saves. Her arms had ached sharply when she'd pulled on Azula's new shackles. Her hands had cradled Zuko's shaggy head, pressed hesitantly to his heart. A first thought: _he channeled it correctly._ Another thought: _he is warm._

He'd thanked her; she'd cried; she'd released him immediately as they stood and only kept one hand on his shoulder while the other burned at her side. Azula swore, screamed and screamed.

Toph, Suki, and Sokka had found them first, four hours later, and Katara had been glad for it. It was a story she had to practice before telling Aang.

* * *

Pale sun filtered through the stitching that held her tent together, flashing in her peripheral vision like lightning or those flying fire insects that live in the humider Fire Nation islands. The tent was well-made once, long ago, but age dried and cracked the skins, and the sun leeched suppleness from them, eliciting gaps between the thread that likely hadn't been, before.

Katara often woke slowly in this season, when the sun was a near-constant shine. Summer peaked yesterday in the South Pole, and so began the countdown of shorter days, longer nights, and a gradual increase in walkable ice. She preferred the deep winter darkness, which was like walking through a dream.

Dreaming of Azula and Zuko's Agni Kai. She'd been having strangely vivid dreams recently, ones that startled her awake or sent her reeling. Now, she felt strangely hollow.

Next to her was no one, so she stretched hard, enjoying the strain. Aang was in the Earth Kingdom, talking to some governors about ceding land to his newest idea, a neutral city with an elected government. It was one of his better big dreams, and Katara was happy it seems to be going well, but he was frequently frustrated: the Avatar's pleasure rested in quick compromise and easy solutions, which were rarely the business of political leaders so close, still, to war.

She dressed quickly; her fire had gone out in the night, and layers of blankets and the peeking sun were the only sources of warmth in her tent. Long sleeves and pants, boots, tunic, sealskin parka dyed brilliant polar-sky blue. She wrapped her hair in a string of leather gifted to her once by Ty Lee at a celebration in the Fire Nation.

Last year, she'd taken out her hair ornaments, brushed out the loops, and received instead of the bride's ceremonial hair-cutting the warrior's ceremonial shave—on the underside of her neck, at the direction of her father the chief, who seemed intent on behaving as contrarily from Master Pakku as he could for as long as the latter was helping him rebuild the tribe and flirting with his mother. She still shaved it. It made her feel lighter.

Dried fruit from Zuko—he always sent baskets of the stuff on her birthdays, enough for years at a time—and dried meat cured by Sokka last year. She gnawed on a strip of it as she pushed open the tent flap and blinked the inevitable sun-tears away and greeted another morning alone on the outskirts of the capital city of the South Pole.

Warriors and waterbending masters were given almost deific deference in the South as soon as they came to join the tribe, and as such it became Katara's assumed right as waterbending heroine of the War of a Hundred Years to pack herself away for a couple of weeks during the summer and just be alone. She started a couple of years ago, when de-colonizing corps from the Fire Nation arrived to help undo the awful work they'd done. Rebuilding continued at a good clip in the South Pole, now. The capital was a true city, modeled on the buildings the tribe lost generations ago. And Katara enjoyed her time alone, or with Aang if he was there, practicing her bending with a freedom of movement she rarely enjoyed anymore as her father's second-in-command.

She was halfway through her morning forms when a messenger announced his presence with a shout from above the hill, dotted already with several penguins. Like them, the messenger waddled down the snow, careful not to trip in the presence of the master whose peace he disturbed. Katara released the snow she'd been manipulating into tiny spheres, and they exploded with amusing abandon.

Katara held in a rather mean laugh upon recognizing the messenger: a Fire Nation corpsman, obviously un-used to the snow. The de-colonizing 'troops' wore official pins and uniform caps, but the corps was made up of teenagers—the occasional wealthy conscientious objectors during the last years of the war, or those who had been too young for conscription—who signed up to bring home a good paycheck, to travel the world, or to assuage their national guilt. She guessed this one, with his eager clomping gait across the snow, was the latter kind.

"Master Katara," he said with a Fire Nation bow, "I have a message for you."

She tried to smile at him benevolently and took the slim scroll. "Just call me 'Katara.' I wasn't aware my father was using you all as messenger hawks."

The corpsman looked no more than sixteen and put her in mind instantly of Zuko, in those first days at the Western Air Temple, with an awkward laugh. "I, ah, volunteered."

"Sure. Thanks." He likely heard the Avatar might be sharing her tent—it was common knowledge, and often marketable knowledge for the village children, who plied the de-colonizers for all the spending money they could, now that there were actually things to buy in the Southern Water Tribe. _No Avatar here, sorry. Just me._

He was dawdling—waiting for her to read the message. It unraveled neatly in her palm to reveal an unfamiliar hand, very neat and slightly foreign in its phrasing. She scanned it quickly.

Ah. From the Beifong estate.

Ah.

Katara rolled it back up. "Thank you," she said. "Has anyone else in the vill—town received this?" She corrected herself; it wasn't the small, poor hamlet of her childhood anymore, which was objectively good and subjectively quite sad. It was no wonder that Sokka spent his summers away.

"No, the hawk delivered just this one, for you."

Nothing addressed to Aang. That meant he'd probably seen Toph already and was no making his way to the Fire Nation, where he'd be meeting with Zuko. "Message received," she told him somewhat wryly. "Since you're in the business of delivering, would you tell Chief Hakoda that I'll need to take the ship to the northeast Earth Kingdom?"

"Of course. What manner of ship?"

She eyed him impatiently. _One of the warships. I'm going to launch a full assault._ "I'll go on the next cargo ship. There's one due out this afternoon. An oil ship." One of their first, and soon to be most profitable, ventures. Aang didn't like the drilling—said it disrupted 'things,' which presumably means 'spirit things' or 'balance things' in Avatar-speak. But Aang, as Hakoda liked to point out, did not have to keep a nation on its feet. Negotiations about reparations were still slow six years after the war's end, although Zuko said time and again that he'd push for them to go faster; even the Fire Lord could only do so much. Or at least, even a Fire Lord like Zuko could only do so much.

"Of course," the corpsman said again, bowing. "I hope it wasn't bad news."

She turned away from him, a little petulant that her week away from tribal business has been cut short, and got to work taking her tent down. _That depends on how much you liked Toph's mother._

* * *

After a quick meeting with her father and a quicker note to Sokka, who was spending the summer on Kyoshi Island, Katara packed herself into one of the few cabins in the cargo ship and pestered the captain to leave ahead of time.

Maybe it was for the best that her alone time had been cut short; she did have work to do, particularly on the trade agreement with the Earth Kingdom islands that had proclaimed autonomy after the close of the war. Tricky, that; it wouldn't do to make the Earth Kingdom proper angry, but Katara could easily see a future in which the mercurial royal family no longer held sway in commercial matters, anyway. The governors were vying for more power all the time. What good was it to sign a treaty 'in perpetuity' when the world was changing so fast?

Plus, she hadn't even read the damn thing yet.

So she set to work in the weak light offered by her cabin's single glassed-in porthole, saving her few candles for the night, when it would be much colder and their warm orangey light would be more appreciated. This, she reflected wryly, was what her traveling life was like now: no more running in hunger and fear, but slow movement towards an agreeable end. No more making paragraphs of world history—more scribbling in the margins of someone else's choice.

She remembered, suddenly, the six months or so after the war, in which she and Aang, rootless, had stayed in the Fire Nation to assist Zuko and petition for the restoration of their homes.

Zuko came frequently to find her in those last months in the palace, as he was getting ready for his coronation and began to lead rebuilding commissions, planning councils, de-occupation committees, reparations negotiations. Katara sat on those meetings, too, with her father, when he was there, and other world leaders. She remembered standing as she talked, as she always did when she was particularly animated. She remembered catching Zuko's eye upon sitting back down and feeling oddly gratified when he smiled or winked or rolled his eyes in response.

She was told, and soon realized herself, that she was good at politics—that she enjoyed it. She could argue hard and hold court. Her legendary status obligated people to listen to otherwise would not, but her fire reeled them in after. She'd made good deals for her home and for the colonial Fire Nation population, who had been roundly ousted from their former holdings. Whispers claimed she was too much a 'friend to the Fire Nation' until she'd made a (very public) speech about being a friend to the ' _people_ of the Fire Nation—the ones I met in the war, who helped us survive while we were being hunted.'

Zuko had half-joked about hiring her as an adviser; she herself entertained the idea of becoming an ambassador to the Fire Nation. Her father, frowning, had expressly forbid it. "You belong home," he said. "We need you more than he does."

She hadn't asked about ambassadorship to the Northern Water Tribe or to the Earth Kingdom, she realized later. But to be honest, she wasn't interested in working in the trumped-up court of King Kuei or joining the misogynists in the North. She could have done real good in the Fire Nation, working with Zuko for her country. Better, certainly, than their current ambassador—Koronok—who was about as competent at the job as Momo would have been.

Outside of their meetings, Zuko had often invited her to walk around the palace grounds, up on the rooftops, through the servants' corridors. They'd talked—frequently about Azula, who was barely taking food and terrifying her guards. More frequently about Aang, who as ambassador of all that was good and light was busier even than Zuko in those odd days after the fighting had finished.

The forthcoming Fire Lord had been as soft-eyed as Katara was, it seemed, about the Avatar who was their good friend. "I couldn't do what he's done," he said to her in rasps. "I couldn't stomach it. I don't know how he didn't kill Ozai." The unspoken thing: _I would have killed Ozai._

 _It's good you didn't have to._ "Aang's always been like that. Since I met him, anyway." A year ago, was it then? More? Fourteen had gone by so fast, and she had already become old and creaky, shriveled with hunger and sinewy with necessary muscle. Hakoda had been plying her with blubbered jerky since he'd come for the meetings.

She'd thought about it—about Aang. "Being good isn't all there is, though. Aang is wonderful—sparkling. But he's got his flaws. He judges quickly. People. Actions. He's still got to grow up."

Zuko had been running his hand down the cool wall of the wine cellar. They'd traveled further below ground during the summer to escape the heat of the Fire Nation's rainy season, which was the kind of heat that oppressed. "But he's _good_."

She'd shrugged. "Avatars aren't 'good' by definition; from what I've heard, a lot of them were a real pain. Aang is 'good' because he's a kid, a nice kid, and because it was the way he was raised to be. He's still young, even after everything. He'll change."

He'd looked at her strangely. "You're young, too."

"I'm getting older," she'd said, remembering suddenly and bizarrely when he'd saved her the first time, by pushing her out of the way of falling rock at the Western Air Temple, and the way they'd landed: his chest on her back, his arms square, his fingers curling at the slope of her breasts. Somehow, it hadn't happened so fast that she'd missed the placement of his fingers.

Zuko, not seeing her expression, had snorted, and said, "And you were never as nice."

Now, Katara set down her pen and scrubbed at her eyes, feeling the unwelcome burn of forthcoming tears. What was wrong with her today? Prickly and restless. Gut-empty. She'd dreamed last night of lightning tracing a path across the sea, spreading from Fire Nation to Earth Kingdom to the sky and back down to an iceberg where the boy Avatar sat in hibernation, a hundred years late to life. It had split the ice and killed him where he lay, and Katara had watched it from above, unable to move until the sky let her go and she plummeted into the cold black water below.

The air on deck was bracing and at the ship's back; they were nearly out to open sea already, and the harbor of her home was barely a white glimmer on the horizon. It smelled like oil, slick and perfumey. The ocean was a forbidding dark blue, and the color gave her energy. Marshaling a power she hadn't felt in quite a while, Katara shifted into a mobile stance, one foot in front of the other. She raised her hands above her head and felt the infinite volumes beneath her, and all the life therein. She waited until something surged in her blood, and then, and then. She moved.

The ship surged forward.

* * *

The next night at sea, Katara woke up with pain and blood and cursed herself for forgetting. Working quickly, she took water from the basin in the corner and soaked the violent evidence on the ship's blankets; stripped and did the same with her wrappings. Naked in the candlelight of her cabin she paced, massaging herself with healing hands.

 _Twenty,_ she thought. This was the eighth year of her bleeding. Old, according to the Water Tribes. Well into marriageability and further into mother-potential, which she'd gained to her dubious celebration in the easier years before joining Aang. Gran-Gran had smiled at her with quite obvious pain and only later told her gravely that it was good all the men were gone, and better that she had learned what it was like to live in a world without them.

It came to her unbidden: _I'll save you from the pirates._

How could a girl not be conscious of such things as years and body-feeling when surrounded by a horde of pirate men and a flinty teenage royal whose eyes held only single-minded fierceness?

She had shivered then. Caught.

The night before he'd left for the Earth Kingdom, Aang had been tracing arrows on her arms. "Katara," he said carefully, "Why do you make that motion? Every time, after."

She should have known he'd notice and ask. He was the Avatar; he would be able to feel all kinds of bending, the senses of them, the aches. Katara was happy to be on her stomach, furs and seal skins draped over her lower half, her head cushioned by Aang's leg, her face turned away from him. "It's a contraceptive bending move," she answered flatly.

"I thought so. Where'd you learn that?"

She thought about saying 'Hama,' just to see him jump—but something kept her from being awful. "The healing women know all sorts of in-body bending. In some ways, it's just like removing poison—you use the contaminated water as a medium, and you can trace where it's been and wash it out from there."

His hand stilled. "Like _poison_?"

"In theory—it's not a perfect comparison, obviously," she said, smiling up at him in presumed reassurance.

Aang's face, for once, had been hard to read. "Ah."

"Well—I assumed that pregnancy was something we'd talk about first, before actually letting it happen," she reasoned, drawing herself up to look at him fully. She saw Aang's eyes glide over her shoulders and torso and blushed, oddly enough. She'd been so comfortable—now, she took one of the skins and wrapped it over her shoulders.

"At some point, we should," he said, all easy smiles again. "When you're ready. It think I'm ready."

"Thanks, Aang."

He'd kissed her. And that night, in a half-sleep haze, she'd thought she had a swollen belly, and that her arms were covered in a thousand blue arrows pointing up, to her eyes, around her skull. When she'd stretched her hand out to the other side of the pallet her fingers had touched Aang's lips, where light shone so bright as to wake her up with a gasp, jolting upright in the unloving snow of the South Pole, fifty feet from her home, bare feet aching with cold, her hand outstretched to grasp nothing at all.

* * *

There was a pleasant anonymity in traveling alone. Wearing a simple brown coat now rather than her signifying parka, Katara bid goodbye to the ship captain, who thanked her expressively for the bending that had saved them half a week of travel, and quickly boarded a train to Ba Sing Se.

She nevertheless caught curious looks on her public car. A de-colonizing corpsman seemed to recognize her and quickly began whispering to his compatriot. They were both decked in expensive-looking maroon robes that wouldn't have lasted two days in the poles. Katara felt a wave of gratefulness for the corpsmembers at her home. She should have gotten that messenger's name before she left—reached out to his family—thanked him. Something.

The trade agreement was still half-unread, but she dared not unfurl it here. Politics in the Earth Kingdom were sticky, and it was better that people guess at who she was rather than her give any confirmation. She leaned against the window instead, watching the fields and villages pass by.

Her car emptied with every stop in the Lower and Middle rings, and by the time they reached the Upper Ring, she was certain all of her fellow travelers had a good idea of who she was. Standing as gracefully as possible under the weight of a dozen gazes, Katara drew her coat a little closer and hooked her bag—the same she'd traveled with when she was fifteen—under her arm. It still smelled a bit like Appa, which was as comforting as it was disgusting.

"Excuse me," she said to the corpsmen, whose legs blocked the aisle. Unfortunately, they took her politeness as regard, and one sprang to his feet and bowed low.

"Master Katara, it is our pleasure to welcome you to the Earth Kingdom," he murmured. "Here on business?"

She quirked an eyebrow at him. He had the oily manner of a Fire Nation nobleman's son. "Just visiting, thank you."

"We miss you in the Fire Nation," he said—to her consternation, following her down the aisle. "Do you plan on visiting again soon?"

She handed her ticket stub to the collector and disembarked quickly. The corpsman stayed behind, obviously wanting to curry favor but not to have to catch another train to do so. Katara smiled tightly at him. "I have no plans to visit the Fire Nation at the moment," she said, "but I do miss it. What was your name?"

"Oh—Kazuro." He bowed again, narrowly missing the collector's hat. Katara grinned. "I'm sorry to be so forward. It's an honor to have shared a car with one of our Fire Lord's good friends—and a friend to the _people_ of the Fire Nation."

The way he stressed 'people' made her blush. "Thank you, Kazuro. I'm glad to see corpsmen doing good work here in Ba Sing Se." _In the Upper Ring, where it's evidently least needed, but still._

Kazuro seemed thrilled by this commendation, and speechless; Katara took the advantage while she had it and turned away, winding through the crowds in the station and turning left down a heavily-decorated street, at the end of which, she remembered, the Beifong estate lay.

* * *

"It was the most amazing fight I've ever seen. Awesome. Awe-inspiring. Big. Hot. I don't know."

Toph snickered, her feet on one of her estate's nicest outdoor tables. "'Big' and 'hot?' My kind of fight."

"Toph!"

The sun hung light over Ba Sing Se. Katara hadn't felt sun-warm in months—since some kind of commemorative ceremony elsewhere in the Earth kingdom last year, where Toph had gotten roundly drunk and put Sokka in a headlock for the better part of an hour. At the reception-cum-afterparty, she and Aang had climbed to the roof of the host's building and surveyed Ba Sing Se from above. Aang had told her stories of Bumi's latest exploits. She'd laughed and held his hand throughout. It had been one of their best nights together.

"You're usually more descriptive than that," Toph admonished.

"Hey, you know what? It was a long trip here, and I bended half the way." Katara poured herself another cup of cold barley tea. "It's funny you ask, actually. I thought about it again recently."

Toph fell quiet for a moment; she'd been that way over the past day, since the ceremony casting her mother's spirit to rest. "You and Zuko never really talked about it again, after we found you," she said slowly, "but I've been wondering. He did—he did throw himself in front of lightning for you, didn't he? The way you two said it at the time was like, 'oh, no big deal,' but that's…something."

Katara nodded. "It _was_ something."

Toph looked at her expectantly; she grimaced. "Azula shifted her stance at the last minute and cast it at me. He ran and—and—" Something faltered in her mouth: tongue or teeth or air. "And he nearly gallantry'd himself to death. I was terrified. I could have killed him myself."

"I would have gotten to him first. He still hasn't paid me back in full for burning my feet."

Katara giggled—she'd missed the machismo, the ridiculousness, of Toph. "You're still holding that grudge?"

Toph looked indignant. "Katara! You're getting on me about _grudge-holding?_ Way to call the kettle black."

Katara grimaced. "Fair point."

They lapsed into silence again; a servant appeared silently at Toph's elbow with a tray of some snack or another, which neither of them touched. Katara hadn't seen Toph eating much since she'd arrived the previous day. The ceremony casting her mother's spirit to rest had been this morning and Toph had stood next to her father in solemn quiet, toes shifting in the dirt. Her father had kept his head down for the entire ceremony and left almost as soon as it was completed. Toph hadn't seemed surprised by it, but hadn't explained it, either.

The next question Katara phrased carefully. "Have you heard from any of the others?"

"Suki and your dumb brother sent their condolences and their 'love'— _ew_ —and I haven't heard anything from Sparky or your dumb boyfriend."

"Why are all the ones in connection with me 'dumb?'"

Toph shrugged. "Bad taste."

Katara steadfastly ignored this and sucked down the last dregs of her tea, remembering again how Zuko had punched a hole in Azula's defenses and sent her spinning to the ground. "I guess Suki can't travel right now, while she's pregnant," she reasoned.

"Can't or wont," Toph said sourly.

Katara eyed her friend warily; her distaste of Suki was hard to hear, sometimes, and her admiration for Sokka—only guessed at, but difficult to discount—was hard to bear. "I'm a healer. It would be a little different. And thankfully, it's not the case."

Toph scowled. "No little Airbenders?"

Katara choked on laughter, or panic. "Not any time soon, no."

"He's the Avatar," Toph said, and Katara was not quite sure what that meant. "Has he asked yet?"

And just like that: they plunge into uncomfortable territory. Katara refilled her cup again. "Well—no, not as such."

"Don't tell me you haven't—"

"Of course we have," Katara said, testier than she'd meant to, and Toph's mixed look of glee and disgust made her snort. "But again, I'm a healer, and we've been perfectly open about, um, not reproducing."

"Yet."

"Yet," Katara allowed. "We maybe don't see eye to eye on it."

"Yet."

"Yet."

Suddenly earnest, Toph removed her feet from the table and leaned forward. "Sugar Queen. That's going to be really tough for you two."

"Is this just hitting you now?" Katara frowned at her teacup. "It's been four years. I never thought he'd want to…I understand it's his people he's thinking of, and how—I mean, it's his dream to have a family again."

Toph's milky eyes flicked up. Eerie, how they could find Katara's immediately, as if she could feel gazes in her toes. "He does have a family. If he should have learned anything, it's that the kind of bending you do doesn't matter."

Impossibly, Toph sounded fairly hurt. Katara swallowed hard. "I know. But he feels pressure to restore balance in that way."

"In using you as a brood mare?"

It was so blunt, and so hurtful, and so honest, that Katara nearly cracked her teacup. "He doesn't think of it that way. It would be a family. And an honor. And why are we talking about this?"

Toph sat back again and crossed her ankles on the table. She looked angry. "Because I can tell something's bothering you. It was a lucky guess what."

Katara grumbled unintelligibly; Toph rapped her knuckles on the table in sharp reprimand. "I don't wanna pressure you, Sweetness. But. You're not a means to an end."

Did that make her the end in question? "Thanks, Toph." She'd almost been the end of him already: when he gave up his training with Guru Pathik just because he could not let her go. When he could not control the Avatar state because the image of her ticked through his brain in consistent flashes. In the crystal catacombs below Ba Sing Se.

 _It has special properties, so I've been saving it for something very important._

Toph clucked. "My parents haven't been sleeping in the same room for two years now," she said without preamble, flexing her toes on the table, tea sitting listless in her hand.

Katara felt herself frown. "How do you know?"

A wry smile. "The feet never lie."

"Do you think…" Was separation common in the Earth Kingdom? The things she hadn't learned while traveling the world. "Do you think he's in love with someone else?"

"I think she was," Toph said. "I don't think he was ever really in love with her in the first place. I don't know where he goes. But he comes back happier, so I don't really care. Keeps him off my back," she sniffed, unconvincingly.

Katara watched her carefully, but Toph only swirled the tea in her cup. Downed it in one gulp.

"I guess," her blind friend said quietly, "some people don't need other people."

"Do you?"

Slowly, Toph shook her head. "No. But that doesn't mean I don't like having someone around." She licked her lips. "Thanks for coming, Katara."

"Of course I came." Katara said it without thinking, but it was true—she hadn't given it a second thought. Maybe it was a product of her own selfishness, and of wanting to get out of the South Pole while the eternal daytime stretched on. But maybe it was also because it was Toph. "You know, I realized today that your corps members are a little higher-class than ours. Ba Sing Se must be a cushy post."

Toph groaned, seriousness forgotten. "You have no idea how many of them come up here asking about donations for the Lower Ring. 'For rebuilding the Kingdom.' It's like they don't know who I am."

"They probably just want to get a look at you. One almost followed me off the train yesterday."

"They are grasping little assholes, aren't they?" Toph shook her head. "With the best intentions, but still. What were _we_ doing at that age, I ask you?"

"Toph, you _are_ that age."

"Makes it even worse! I was out saving the damn world when they were drooling on their moms' blouses, and now they're coming around here fawning over me with all their drippy Fire Nation guilt." She looked up. "You hungry?"

Katara smiled secretly. Get Toph angry and you get Toph happy. "Sure."

"Good. I'm starving. Let's go to Iroh's."

* * *

"Oho—my favorite customer."

He smiled at them, humble old dragon in a teamaker's apron, accompanied by one of Toph's family's servants, who had run along with them according to custom and had been too slow to announce them, and looked vexed by it.

Iroh spread his arms wide. "My dear, I must offer my most sincere condolences. Your family has been good to the city as it rebuilds. I apologize for not attending the ceremony this morning."

Toph shook her head. "It was family only, old man. There's nothing to apologize for. And I've brought you a gift, anyway." She nudged Katara.

Iroh smiled at her like some benevolent old god, and Katara felt herself flush with happiness. He enfolded her in a hug so warm it nearly elicited tears and then released her, a hand on her shoulder, where it rested with comforting heaviness. "Master Katara, you are more beautiful than ever before," he said. "The South Pole must miss your light."

She blushed truly now. "General, you're too kind. It's so good to see you."

"You know," Iroh said gravely, "I, too, have a gift for you. It came only this morning, but I think you'll both be happy to see it. Would you have a seat here? I'll bring it out."

He directed them to a low table in a private corner, but of course Toph wasn't one to wait. "A gift?" She perked up and slammed her right foot down. A slow smile spread across her face and Katara was pleased by the change; Toph looked beautiful, her dark hair gleaming, her grin confident and pleased. Iron chuckled gently as she shouted, " _Hell_ yes! Come out from there—stop hiding!"

And there he was.

Fire Lord Zuko stepped from, of all the unregal places, the kitchen door, with an equally-pleased smile on his face and his eyes focused on the earthbender who'd launched herself forward to hug him in greeting. Iroh stood by Katara and laughed at their exchange of hair-pulling and jokes; Katara could only smile. She could not stop. Warmth pooled in her stomach and moved quickly to her throat, where it hung, a netted shout.

He'd grown his hair out a little longer, enough for the royal topknot, but it was slung low today, tied back simply, likely for the journey here. He wore plain Fire Nation clothing of dark maroon and black, and the only signal of his rank and title was the crest of his nation, embroidered in golden thread, on his vest. He could have been a corpsman for all anyone knew, save for the scar, and for the sharp line of his jaw that marked him as a son of that cursed blood.

She hadn't seen him in over a year. The last letter she'd written had been months ago. And so she hadn't expected the aching joy at seeing his face again, her greatest friend and enemy.

Toph let up and gave Iroh flack about not keeping her "in the loop," leaving Zuko's gold-lit eyes to fall on Katara. He stepped forward and hugged her. She found herself flinging her arms around his neck. "Hey, Katara."

He was gripping her tightly and muffled by her shoulder. "Hi."

The contact was brief; they released shortly afterwards, and Iroh had them all sitting down, and tea was poured, and Toph praised its quality, which made Iroh beam.

They had been planning to deliver their condolences to Toph later in the day and had been happy to find out Katara was also present, Iroh said. "My nephew was coming to visit me anyway. It was a coincidence of fate. I am glad to see you at this difficult time."

To which Toph, ever with a stiff upper lip, had merely shrugged. "It's not so bad. Katara's been my whipping post."

"Excuse you, I—"

"I know, you bended your way across the world to see me," Toph said in mock-disdain, flapping a hand. "Wah."

Iroh chuckled. "And likely spared the captain several days' work. I understand you have done good work at home," he said warmly to Katara. "I would like to visit sometime, if I may."

"Any time you like! We don't have much to offer for tourism," she added quickly, "not yet, but I—and I know that my dad, too—I'd be more than happy to show you everything."

"You have much to see in the South Pole!" Iron admonished. "The spirits are more active at the poles than anywhere else I know except for the great swamplands. And I would like to see the place where you found the Avatar."

Hakoda had been all for monetizing that particular spot; people with the money to do so would come from all over the world to see the place where the first Avatar in a century had woken from icy slumber with a bright smile and an inquiry about penguin sledding. Katara didn't have a problem with it, but Aang, when consulted, thought it was 'cheap'—and to tell the truth, Katara didn't remember exactly where the place was. _Some iceberg,_ Sokka had said when asked, in precisely the same tone that had led her to crack the ice out of fury in the first place.

"Of all people, you deserve to see it," Katara said, ignoring her mental image of Aang's boy-frown. "Both of you."

Zuko sighed. "I don't know," he said. "The spirits wouldn't like me there."

"Nephew, I'm not sure the spirits would like you anywhere."

"Uncle!"

"Doesn't the Fire Lord carry some weight with the Spirit World?" Katara joked.

Iron gravely shook his head. "I have told them all some very unfortunate stories."

Katara and Toph laughed; Zuko looked put-upon.

They spoke for a while longer, of nothing in particular: the war and rebuilding, Toph's bending battles, Katara's home, Aang's business all over the world. Iroh grunted his approval for the idea of the neutral city. "That, I hope, you are involved in, nephew."

Zuko sighed. "It's become the bane of my existence at home. Everyone wants the territory to come from the Fire Nation, or at least some of the outer islands. The nobles aren't happy about it."

"Why not let the people in the contested areas decide?" Katara asked. "Self-determination. There's no reason for us to be steadfast to our own nations forever. Not anymore."

"Before the war, it was common practice to live in other nations for a time," Iroh said. "Usually, people returned to their homes, particularly if they were benders. The cultural differences are, after all, great. But traveling to, and even making a home in another nation was almost expected."

"It'll take a while for people to reach that level of comfort again," Toph said, with rare gravity. "But I do like the idea. The soil felt different everywhere we went, when we were running away from you two delinquents. That was amazing for me."

Zuko grinned, a little painfully. "See? It was _good_ for you. I did it on purpose. For your education."

Katara snorted, but spared him. It'd been too long since she'd last seen him to be unkind now.

When the sky turned black at last and the insects started singing from the windows, Iroh stood. The tea shop was quite empty, Katara realized, save for Toph's poor servant, who looked to be asleep at the table opposite them. "I regret I cannot stay with you longer," Iroh said, busying himself with something just behind the partition to the kitchen. "I am planning an expansion of my shop! It has quite exhausted my attention. Please accept these with my best wishes. Nephew, are you staying?"

"For a little while. I'll see you above soon, Uncle."

Iroh insisted they wait to open the gifts until he was gone. Katara and Toph slipped open their lovely lacquered boxes, Toph barely disguising her eagerness.

They were full of beautiful-smelling tea, with instructions for boiling and steeping carefully handwritten. And a note.

 _I have never thanked you for foiling all my nephew's most foolish plans, plucky Master. Please know, as I know, that he feels the absence of you and your friends more than he might say—but all of us who lack your pleasant company are at a loss. The luckiest in the world, then, must be the seals, penguins, and sea prunes of the South Pole!_

 _It is my hope that before too long I will share a cup of this exquisite tea with you. Until then, it is with my best wishes that I say again, thank you, and take good care._

 _—_ _Iroh_

It was a precious sentiment and a perfect one. Zuko read Iroh's own message to Toph, which was shorter and funnier than Katara's but no less wonderful. Katara demurred when Toph asked her hear hers.

"It's private."

"You just read mine! Being blind is so unfair."

Katara sighed and made sure to read it in the most expressionless possible voice. It didn't help; the caught warmth in her throat rose to her mouth again. She chanced a glance upward upon finishing: Zuko was staring out a window, into the night sky.

Toph blinked a couple of times. "I didn't know you and Iroh were so close."

"That's the thing," Katara said, still clutching the box. "We're not, really."

* * *

Zuko walked them home. Toph bid them good night at the door to the Beifong estate, telling them to 'prepare' for a 'beastly day' tomorrow—"You don't even want to know what I have planned, now that I know you're _both here_ "—and Katara walked with Zuko to the gates.

The night was cool and below the house, the lower rings glowed. Zuko leaned against the earthen wall, absently scratching the back of his head, and Katara clucked her tongue to muster the courage to ask what she'd meant to, all night long.

"Why didn't Aang come with you?"

Zuko looked surprised when he turned to her. "He didn't write? We got Toph's message when he was in the Fire Nation, but he said he'd already scheduled a meeting with some Northern Water Tribe officials that he couldn't miss."

He hadn't written her anything about that. "I believe it. The Northern Tribe is difficult. But still—he didn't come for Toph?"

Zuko looked down at her. "A neutral city sounds like a paradise after a hundred years of war. I can understand how he sets his priorities. I'm sure he'll come give her condolences afterwards."

His tone of light admonishment irked. "When was the last time we saw each other?" she demanded. "You're taller."

"You're not." He smirked, and for a moment she was fourteen again, blushing angry and ready to fight him. "It's been over a year, I think. Since that thing at the South Pole."

"Right. When you had to borrow my father's parka."

"I'd forgotten how damn cold it is there," he defended. "Not that Chief Hakoda didn't let me forget it. I don't know how you stand it. Don't your eyes freeze?"

"Not if you blink," she said seriously.

He snorted. Very un-royal. "Well in any case, it's been a while. I'm sorry. Can't go on many jaunts as Fire Lord. But anyway, don't be angry at Aang."

She ignored that. "What is being Fire Lord even for, if you can't go on 'jaunts'?" She smirked at him. "Just slip on a mask, sneak over the back wall, hop through the trees, board a ship, and sail. I know you know the way."

"Yeah—due south." Zuko laughed. "That's a long trip, and not much of a vacation: freezing to death right now would still put Azula on the throne. Why don't you come visit me instead?"

Good question. Katara hummed, wondering why he hadn't changed the line of succession yet. "My job. And Aang, I guess. The South Pole is kind of his home base now. And we're still rebuilding."

"You could bring Aang with you. A nice couple's retreat."

"He visits you enough as it is," she said, bumping him with her elbow. "It's unfair. Why didn't Mai come with you?"

Zuko set his jaw; it was a moment before he responded. "I didn't tell you, did I? She left the Fire Nation."

"She _what?_ "

"She left the Fire Nation. Went to join Ty Lee, who's doing whatever she's doing. It was amicable," he said hurriedly. "Tough. But amicable. It actually began happening about two years ago, and we just held on for as long as we could. I couldn't give her the time we needed. She couldn't give me the leeway I needed. It was all written from the beginning of the whole thing. And I think," he added with a little blush, "she and Ty Lee may be together."

"You sound like your uncle," Katara chided. "Those things aren't determined by fate. It sounds like you both made your choices." The look on his face—irritated, resigned, a little wistful—had her relenting immediately. "I'm sorry, though. How are you doing?"

"I'm fine," he said, and sounded honest about it. The wind blew a couple locks of hair in front of his face. His scar, in the moonlight, rippled like melted candle wax. "How are you?"

She hadn't realized she'd been frowning. "I'm fine."

* * *

Of course she'd come to _admire_ Zuko—physically—

She choked on the word when Toph, the next night, asked.

It had indeed been a 'beastly' day, with rock-sliding and near constant sparring and only a trip to the tea shop for a bit of Iroh's mercy; Toph seemed elated to have Sparky and Sweetness back with her, and wanted to keep them busy, and to keep herself busy. By sunset, Zuko was kissing Toph on the head and giving Katara a little salute and telling them both he'd see them tomorrow before he met with the Earth Kingdom governors and left to resume his domestic duties as Fire Lord.

But, yes, of course. She'd been fourteen, and she'd hated him with a kind of ferocity that had to have been tinged with some self-denial, and then he'd saved her life twice by placing his body directly in line of her own personal danger. Such actions continuously put his body next to hers for comparison and elimination. Such actions kept them close.

But so often during that year of horror, Katara had been conscious of bodies. How could she _not_ become aware of the fact of her physical form when all she did was run and fight and grow and shrink—constantly moving, constantly shifting, over the course of a year? And while she grew, so did her brother, and so did Aang, whose body roiled with energy so intense that sometimes she could not stand to sense him. And as she'd come to know herself, her power, she could feel the thrum of blood beneath the skins of her closest friends if she tried.

If she tried.

Now, she and Toph were drinking a spicy spirit Zuko had gifted them with a roll of his eyes, saying, "It's really from Uncle. He thinks you should lighten up," and Katara could feel her own blood rushing. It was good; it was strong. The drink made Katara feel pleasantly mannish, knocking it back. She did so now.

"Like after the lightning. I could sense his blood better, after that," she told Toph. "I can—every time I heal someone, I get a sense of their blood. But after something like that, you can't…you can't _not_ understand his blood. Know it."

"That's not what I'm asking," Toph said. "I'm not asking about his creepy blood. I'm asking if you ever wanted to sneak into his room at night."

Katara leveled her with a Look only to remember, for whatever time, that Looks did not work on Toph. She tried to channel it through her voice: "Only to kill him."

Toph's laughter was raucous in the quiet dark. Two Beifong bodyguards, quite uselessly, came fists-a-clenched, and soon retreated to their posts.

Zuko had been a good sport that day, as he always was with Toph. He'd played and competed and eaten with abandon; sparred with Katara like they were back in training before Sozin's comet, and joked with her about Sokka's life as a married man, and—consciously, it seemed, after last night's conversation—did not ask much about Aang. Katara wondered what he and Aang talked about, when they were together in the Fire Nation. If they talked about her.

She was rambling now. "Aunt Wu—this was before you joined us, Toph, but Aunt Wu was a fortuneteller—she told me that I would marry a powerful bender."

Toph sat up. "Are you telling me that you're getting married? You and Twinkletoes?"

"I can't see it ending any other way."

"See it _ending?_ See what, ending? Are you breaking up? I thought you were getting married."

"Will you slow down?" Katara nibbled on her bottom lip. "You were right about making things clear with Aang. I should leave the South Pole for a little while."

Toph sat back again, cream eyes turned to the ceiling, not asking the question: 'What's going on with you?' but substituting another: "Why do you want to leave?"

Why, indeed? It felt unfair to have to stay, that was why. She was lonely, that was why. "I feel a little restless."

Toph hummed. "I'll come with you, if you want."

"You'll take that back in the morning. We made terrible travel companions."

"That was three years ago," Toph had said, emptying her cup. "You're older now, and less annoying."

Katara threw her cup and ducked when Toph threw it back, and laughed when it shattered. _Older now._ What Zuko had said in the wine cellar three years back, in that musty cool place where the promises of hazy sweetness had laid ready in their racks like open legs, when Zuko had said it there it had had the cadence of a poem: "You're young, too."

 _You're young, too/You young two/You, young, too._

Her blood hummed.

* * *

That night, staring at the ceiling of her lavish room in the Beifong estate, her mind buzzing with pleasant sweetness and her lips slightly swollen from spice and drink, Katara let herself think of Jet.

That had been another shocking awareness of body, of closeness and heat. Stepping lightly over Aang and Sokka to meet him outside. Climbing to his treehouse; being overwhelmed. Touched and talked to like an _adult._ Fingers on her neck. Palms on her waist. And she'd grasped his shaggy hair, which had smelled like woodsmoke, and her own fingers hadn't trembled when she'd reached to unhook the bone clasps of her tunic. She'd been wearing so many layers—stupid, a kid from the Poles sweating to death in the light of all those fires. Jet hadn't laughed at her but had looked at her like he'd glimpsed something very suddenly—that piece of grass discarded from his pliable lips, his mouth open a little, his sharp eyes curbed by whatever he found in the space between her chin and her clavicles.

At Lake Laogai, her fingers on his temples. He'd stared at her after, in awe and fright of her mind-half-reading, and his eyes had rested at that same space.

She'd kissed a dead man. That was something. That was fleeting, that rush of blood and heat.

Katara longed suddenly to make an imprint on something. It had been a long time since she'd moved her body in violence or love. Aang felt a long way away, and the nights they shared felt further. _Twenty_. Twenty to his eager eighteen. How could she feel like an old woman already? How much blood could one lose before all the vibrant red light life goes with it and then—and then?

Azula was sobbing, drooling, shooting fire. The fingers that had just tried to take the life of her brother were screwed useless by chains. White-blinding horror.

To her frank horror, Katara was crying. She pressed her eyes shut.

Imagine Fire Lord Zuko with his face at the window just there, to her left, waiting like he had been waiting outside of her tent all those years ago. _I know how to find him._

His long hair loose. Strong shoulders propelling him up and over and there he is, sitting next to her, still waiting. He'd crouched like that, ready and watchful, when they'd gone to avenge her mother and she'd forced the man who was not Yon Rha down by the force of his own body. Zuko had never asked her about it, though she was sure he knew what it was.

And then something happens—something unseeable, but something like the way Jet's eyes got bigger and lovelier all those years ago, and they would murmur words and then, somehow, he'd bend to skim his lips on hers, and his hands would go around her head and hips.

She caught Zuko looking at her once during that trip, when she was guiding Appa for the second sleepless night. Looking at her unseeably like that, with golden eyes too serious, and she'd ignored it so steadily, so well, thinking first, _we have to find Yon Rha._

Katara sat up suddenly; blinked around her room for a moment; ignored the tide of feeling that pushed at the top of her throat again; and did not sigh to find that she had been dozing. Outside, the stars pushed their light through the dark sky's fabric and the moon shone wide and open. Full moon. Blood moon. Katara closed her eyes and let Yue's light wash over her forehead and willed herself to not think of Jet, of Zuko, or of Aang. Sometimes, if she concentrated, she could feel cool fingers over her brow. Sometimes, if she concentrated, she thought she could feel all the water in the world, like she could kill the living universe with a tug of her quivery fingers.

 _The moon is my friend and I am alive._

* * *

Zuko found her the next morning, while Toph was still sleeping off the liquor. She was drinking strong tea in the garden, watching sparrowkeets swing gracefully by to pluck fall fruits from hardy stems.

He cleared his throat, making her jump. "Good morning."

"Morning. You're early—Toph's still sleeping."

"I'm not surprised." He sat next to her on the bench. His hair was loose, brushing the tips of his shoulders, messy and dignified. "Are you going back home soon? I'd imagine you're busy since Sokka's at Kyoshi."

"I am. Busy, I mean. I was thinking of not going home right away, though, if I can help it."

Zuko didn't react immediately; he only sat back and put his arm along the bench. The bend of his forearm brushed against her shoulder. "Why not?"

"Well." She didn't exactly have an answer yet. "There's a bit of negotiating to be done with the autonomous Earth territories. It might be better just to go speak with them, now that I'm in the area."

"That's a long trip, even so," he observed. "You and Aang will miss each other if he goes back to the Southern Water Tribe after the North."

Katara blushed without quite knowing why. "That is true."

She felt his gaze on her. She watched the sparrowkeets. "Are you two, um…doing okay?"

Zuko sounded as if he would rather ask any other question. She met his eyes. "Why are you asking?"

"You don't sound excited to go see him again."

"He's only been gone for two weeks," she said dryly. "We don't have to be at each other's side constantly, you know. We are, in fact, self-sufficient."

"Okay, okay." He held a hand up in supplication. "The two of you just seem…" He surveyed her. "Different. Now."

Katara remembered with viciousness the way Aang's fingers had stilled on her arm when she'd said 'poison.' "We may be having a slight disagreement. But it's more of a not-talking-about-it thing than an actual argument."

"Sounds healthy."

She shot him a glare that she faintly hoped could turn him to ice. "He's a professional mediator. We'll work it out."

Zuko chuckled at that and—to her complete shock—fingered a coil of her hair. "I like the cut," he said absently. "How long have you had it this way?"

"It's a warrior's shave," she said. "Tradition would have indicated that by this age I'd have cut my hair as a bride. Dad thought it would make more sense if I went through this ceremony, instead."

"The Avatar is not a forthcoming suitor?"

He was teasing, she knew, but the question still made something in her bubble up. She looked at him shrewdly. "You've talked to him about this, haven't you?"

Zuko's smile was wan. "Guilty. He visits more than you do, remember?"

She huffed. "I don't suppose I can ask you what he says."

"I'm more interested in what _you_ have to say."

She swallowed her tea in a Tophlike gulp before answering. "Toph used the phrase 'brood mare' yesterday." Zuko winced. "He's not that bad about it," she said. "But in some ways it does feel like that's a condition of marriage. And I'm not a mother, Zuko, not yet. Not at all."

"But you want to be a wife?"

Aang looked at her so shiningly and the world was hers there, with him: he loved her beyond even her own comprehension, like she'd done him some ultimate good, when all she could think of sometimes were the myriad ways she'd done him wrong. And some other times, she thought of how lovely it might be to be just alone. _I guess some people don't need other people._

Zuko was still looking at her, and he looked torn. "I'm sorry. I was just curious. You two seemed to be so constant, while the rest of us fluctuated. Sokka and Suki having a baby; Toph doing who knows what with who knows who; Mai and me. You and Aang seemed a done deal."

"And now you're already talking about us in the past tense."

Zuko groaned.

Katara laughed lightly. "It's okay. You wouldn't be you if you didn't stick your foot in your mouth. I think…I think I need to think. And I think Aang does, too, even if he doesn't realize it."

"So you'll institute a forced separation by going to the Earth territories?"

"Where would you have me go instead?"

He stared at her, and the nagging pressure at her throat increased. His lips were pressed thin, the Fire Lord's, and she could remember the way they trembled in pain and horror at the sight of his sister writhing and screaming on the ground, chained to a drainage grate, prisoner to madness and to him. In his last letter, he'd written, ' _Azula can recognize me now. But she refuses to speak to me. Uncle says to give it time, but I'm not sure how long she can stay like this without it becoming permanent. Six years is long already.'_

Zuko cleared his throat. "You can come visit the Fire Nation, if you want," he said quietly. "We miss you there."

So the corpsman had said. _It's an honor to have shared a car with one of the Fire Lord's good friends._ Katara looked away from Zuko and watched a sparrowkeet make away with a wizened plum. "How is Azula?"

Zuko withdrew his arm from behind her and clasped his hands over his knees. "Like I said. We miss you there."

She saw the bones in his wrist shift. "I'll come by after I visit the autonomous islands," she said. "It's not a far journey. I can take one of the commercial ships."

Zuko looked up again, and something in his face made him look sixteen. "Do you have to do your negotiations first? If you want to come to the Fire Nation now, you can just join me on my way back. Toph can come, too, if she wants."

She stared at him. "Weren't you just admonishing me for not going home straightaway to see Aang?"

He shrugged, a little insolent. Katara glared at him. He was right; it made more sense to just go back with him, if she was going at all. "When do you leave?"

Zuko grinned like he'd already won. He had. "In three hours. I have a quick meeting first, but I'll come back and get you."

"I can make my way to the ports myself."

"Nonsense. You're a guest of the Fire Nation now." He stood, still grinning. He looked like a teenager again. He looked happy. "You'll need a proper escort."


	2. born in you along with all this strife

**A/N:** I didn't leave any Author's Note last time, so here we are: Hello! And welcome. This is a rather slapdash attempt at mulling through some of the problems I think a post-war Katara would have had to deal with. There are conflicting feelings about home, about Aang, about her own power and legacy; and of course, there are expectations and politics and the desire to just run away. Those are the things I want to focus on. So while this is in some ways a Zuko/Katara romance, it is more fully about Katara and the ways in which she has to deal with things she's kept hidden since the end of the war.

Another note on timeline: I noticed in the last chapter that I bounced around with years. This takes place six years after the war, meaning that Katara is about twenty years old.

Please do review, and offer constructive criticism if you have it! These will be long, drabble-y chapters, and probably subject to many mistakes.

 **Disclaimer:** This work is my own, but I do not own the characters or storyline of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

* * *

 **ii. born in you along with all this strife**

 _Dad,_

 _While visiting Toph (who is doing well, all things considered) I realized I should really visit the autonomous territories myself for a face-to-face meet. I'll be heading there straightaway after a visit to Caldera City. I'll meet with Koronok while I'm there and come back with a full report in about a month._

 _If you want me to do anything in particular, send a message. I'm writing Aang, too, but he might not get the letter by the time he returns from the North._

 _Love, Katara_

 _Aang,_

 _Hope your negotiations are going well. I'm heading to Caldera_

Katara bit her lip, tapped her pen. If only she could simply _tell_ him. Writing it out felt like avoiding the issue—it was delayed, it was over-wordy and inadequate. But.

 _and doing some negotiation in the Earth territories while I'm equatorial. I'll see you back home before too long. Keep me apprised of how things go. Toph is doing well. She'll be in Ba Sing Se for another couple of weeks while she gets her mother's affairs in order; then she might come to Caldera as well. Send her a message, if you have time._

 _Give Appa my love. My bag still smells like his mangy fur. Miss you both._

 _Katara_

Toph cleared her throat. "All this paper-scratching. What are you writing, a novel?"

"Just explaining to Aang," Katara said absently, sealing the letters and folding them into a pouch for the hawk, who waited patiently at the window.

"Explaining what, exactly?" Toph's voice was shrewd.

"Why his bedroll was full of mud that one night in Jang Hui."

Toph laughed. "That was a good one! One of my best, I think. You ready to party in the Fire Nation?"

Katara grabbed her bag from the side of the bed and waved the hawk away; it squawked indignantly. "Not much partying to be done, I think. I still have to figure out this treaty business. But it'll be a good visit. You really have to stay for a couple of weeks?"

Toph scowled at nothing and led her out of the room. "Yeah, so they say. My father's pretty much useless at the moment."

He'd stumbled into the house this morning with fumes of something on his clothing, Katara had seen it. And collapsed into his bed with a retinue of clucking servants. "Don't let it worry you," she said softly as they crossed into the courtyard. "Let me know if I can do anything from afar."

Toph quirked her mouth in a kind-of smile. "Katara, I'm glad you came," she said with unusual feeling. "Just enjoy being away from Twinkletoes for a little while. Hey Sparky, come to take her away?"

Zuko was royally dressed now, with all the pointy accoutrements of Fire Nation armor. His hair was in a topknot and accompanied by the little gold crown, bright enough to hurt the eyes. "If only it had been this easy to get you on a Fire Nation ship six years ago," he joked wryly.

"I don't think we would have gotten the premium suites," she said lightly.

Zuko embraced Toph, whose head hit just below his shoulders now. "See you soon, Blind Bandit."

"Jerkbender." Toph extricated herself from his robes and punched Katara in the arm in farewell. "Have fun for me."

She watched them go for a very long while, Katara noticed, with a curious look on her face. When they were nearly out of sight, Katara raised her arm and, foolishly, waved; and even though Toph couldn't see them, she must have felt the change in movement, because she smiled a little and raised her hand in silent acknowledgement.

* * *

The ship was small and fast and decorated minimally in the red and gold that marked it as a royal's. Zuko introduced her to the officers of the crew, including the captain, Jee, a rather grizzled sailor who looked quite familiar. Indeed, Jee bowed to Katara with a smile and said, "It is good to see you again, Master Katara, and in friendlier circumstances."

Of course. He'd been an officer on Zuko's ship during his banishment. Zuko groaned as Katara bowed as well. "Don't listen to him," he advised. "I think he tried hard to inscribe every humiliating defeat you bestowed upon me in his memory."

"Then I will _definitely_ listen to him," Katara said, grinning. "It's nice to see you again, too, Captain Jee. Let me know if you need help navigating troubled waters."

Jee looked delighted by this offer, but Zuko steered her away, taking her on a tour of the deck and the helm, the officer's cabin, his office, and finally her cabin, which had obviously been hastily arranged with blankets and a desk.

He looked happy—almost giddy—while he walked with her, moving his arms when he described their trip to Ba Sing Se and grinning reflectively during a story about Jee, back when the captain was a lieutenant, during music night.

Katara laughed to see him so obviously pleased. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you missed being on a ship."

Zuko chuckled. "I think I have missed it. I had this one retrofitted from a warship a couple of years ago." Her shoulder lightened as he took her bag from her without prompting, setting it down by the bed. "Do you want to go back on deck? Or do you have work to do?"

"I have work to do," she said, and was gratified by his crestfallen face, "but I want to go back on deck."

It was always colder on the water than on land, but Katara left her coat in the room and enjoyed the prick of the wind on her skin, watching Zuko confer with his sailors about some detail or another. It was nearly autumn in the Earth Kingdom, which meant that the late-summer rainy season was just about to end in Caldera City. The main squares would be draped with cloth between the buildings so that the outdoor markets could continue beneath, and the humid air would send heady scents of fruit and woodwork through the air.

Six years ago, it would have been impossible to think that she'd miss the Fire Nation. Back then all she'd wanted was to go home and build a fire and hug Gran-Gran and ice-fish with Sokka and pretend that the world hadn't irreversibly shifted. But when the war ended, home felt like a chore: staying in the foreign Fire Nation and growing, slowly, back into the full person that she had been before her fourteenth year.

She felt happier now, on deck of this former warship, than she had felt in a long while. At the bow, she felt like she was the only one on the sea. The sun accompanied them, warming her arms and cheeks despite the goosebumps. Her tunic, a light purple gift from the North, flapped pleasantly around her knees. She'd have to borrow or buy Fire Nation clothing for the damned heat. But for now she was alone on the water, and the wind slipped by the bareness at the back of her neck, reminding her of who she was.

Zuko's warmth forecast his approach. She tilted her head to show she knew he was there. "How often does your uncle visit?"

"Not often enough," Zuko said a little sadly, joining her at the bow. "But I can't begrudge him his shop. It's been his dream for years."

"He's a wonderful man," Katara said with feeling, thinking of the lacquered box in her bag.

Zuko smiled into the wind. "He is. And he's very fond of you."

That was good to hear. They were quiet for a while again, a pleasant quiet, until Zuko sighed, sounding plaintive. "About Aang."

This sounded like a potentially good mood ruined. Katara flicked her eyes up to him. "What?"

Her voice must have sounded dangerous. Zuko winced. "He told me you've been having, uh, bad dreams recently."

That was unexpected. Katara blinked. "I hadn't realized he'd noticed."

"He told me you didn't talk about them. But that you'd started sleepwalking, and waking up suddenly. And that you'd gotten quieter. Wanted to be alone more."

"That's all true, I suppose." So he'd noticed her strange-feeling. "He hasn't said anything about it. Why did he tell you?"

Zuko looked at her fully now. "He's worried about you."

"He hasn't said as much," she repeated, and her voice sounded nasty even to her own ears. "Is that why you wanted me to come to the Fire Nation? To talk to me about Aang?"

"Absolutely not," Zuko said, with such vehemence that Katara felt gratified. "But I have noticed that you seem…distracted, somehow. And after we talked at Toph's, I just thought maybe you needed a break. And I think you miss the Fire Nation a little." He sounded doubtful. "Or at least that you wanted to get away from home."

She exhaled in a whoosh. "I do. Don't tell my father." Zuko chuckled. "I've had vivid dreams before, Zuko. It's nothing unprecedented."

Zuko tapped his fingers on the deck. "In Ba Sing Se last time," he said, and somehow Katara knew he wasn't talking about the dozens of times they'd been in Ba Sing Se before but the first time, the time they'd been thrown into the catacombs, "I got really sick after freeing Appa. I thought I was going to die. And I kept having these dreams, incredibly vivid and awful dreams that felt like—like prophecies, or something. Of being an airbender, and of being Fire Lord, and of not having my scar. Crazy visions."

For some reason, Katara's chest felt heavy, expectant. Zuko was tugging at his breastplate.

"Uncle called it a 'metamorphosis.' He said that at the end, I would find who I was supposed to be. And it was soon after that that I—that you and I—that we were below Ba Sing Se."

Katara couldn't quite nod.

"And there, after he and Aang found us, he told me—" Zuko cleared his throat. "He said, 'this is the crossroads of your destiny.' The result of the metamorphosis: I could either accept that I had changed, or…or not." He smiled with so much pain Katara almost took a step back. "You know what happened. I rejected it. I hurt you, and I hurt Aang, and I hurt Uncle. Worse than I ever had before. I nearly killed the Avatar. You could have died if Azula'd gotten to you."

"She didn't. She couldn't."

"No," Zuko acquiesced, "she never could. You were exquisite." He looked at her. "But look, all I'm saying is—don't take dreams lightly."

"You never struck me as someone who believed in divination," Katara said.

Zuko shrugged. "Uncle likes to say that the Spirit World tries to reach us, and teach us, in dreams. That we see our futures just enough to understand the choices we have to make in waking life. I believe in Uncle."

Arrows all over her body. Lightning arching across the sea. Azula sobbing and Jet's fingers guiding Katara's waist closer.

Zuko was still watching her. "Why don't you tell me about them?" he coaxed. "You can rest in the Fire Nation. We can talk about it."

Katara snapped her eyes open. She had no words. She didn't feel like she was on the precipice of something, of some great change. And how many prophecies had she heard and followed and flaunted? The only spirit she had connection to was Yue, and even then—even now, she felt distant.

She worked away the lump in her throat. "I think I could be alone, now."

Zuko ducked his head and she saw frustration, regret. "Alright. Sure. I'll see you for dinner."

She didn't watch him leave, but watched the waves instead. _You were exquisite._

* * *

She was shaving the back of her head carefully, with a mirror perched above the bowl, when Zuko knocked on her door after dinner. She grunted permission for his entry.

Zuko chuckled. "That looks hard to do by yourself."

She neatly cut the last column of hair to a short fuzz. "You had someone else arrange your baldy ponytail?"

Zuko did not blush when he said, "Of course. That's what servants are for."

Katara snorted. _Royalty._ "I guess it would make it easier." She scraped the knife with her thumb to get rid of the extra hairs and combed her fingers through the thick hair above the shave, twisting it into a knot. "Dinner was good. You have a talented cook."

"He came on Uncle's recommendation," Zuko said, rolling his eyes. "But anyway, I wanted to…apologize for pushing you earlier."

He looked angry at himself, and at her, as if she'd made him come in and say the words. Katara folded her arms. "You don't need to apologize. I'm angrier at Aang for just—for not asking me."

Zuko thinned his lips. "I don't want you to be angry at Aang, either. He told me only because I asked about you. But it sounded familiar to me—the dreams. I thought I might be able to help." He shrugged again.

Katara regarded him silently. What a strange figure he cut now, Fire Lord in looks and name until he was casting his eyes to the ground and apologizing for being a decent human being. She was so undeniably crueler than him. His anger flared; hers remained. "I don't really want to tell you about my dreams," she said, a little apologetically.

"Okay."

He'd said it instantly; he'd been expecting it. _Always prepared to be denied._ "But thank you, Zuko, for asking at all. For my side. Not just taking Aang's word for it."

"I don't want to get between you two in any kind of fight," he warned, the hint of a smile on his face. "That's not something I do, anymore—risk my life senselessly."

Katara snickered. "No, Fire Lord Zuko, that wouldn't do."

He seemed to wrestle with something for a moment. "Well. Good night."

"Good night." In the mirror, she could see him looking at her back. He held her gaze for a half-second; then disappeared, as he was so good at doing.

Then, impossibly, he reappeared, pushing the door open with a little more force than seemed necessary. "Sorry. Um. Do you want some tea?"

"Sure." Katara bent to rummage in her pack and held out the lacquer box to him. "Brew Iroh's." On second thought—she withdrew it. "Or have the cook brew it. I don't trust you."

Zuko sighed and held out his hand for the box. "I'll have him do it. Remember where my cabin is?" She nodded. "Okay. There, in fifteen minutes or so? I have to finish up a letter."

"Sure."

He nodded at her, distracted again—and this time, shut he door when he left.

Katara stared at it. Her back throbbed.

* * *

When Zuko poured the tea the steam curled fluidly to Katara's cheek, making her shiver. It smelled like earth and sweetness. His cabin was lit by many candles whose flames seemed to lengthen and shorten with his breath, and he'd divested of his armor, wearing simple robes like those he'd favored during his time as a traitor to his Nation. The crown rested on his desk and his hair was tied back simply again.

Katara felt like she had to hold her breath. "Iroh knows his teas," she said instead.

Zuko nodded and poured his cup. Katara warmed her hands with her own. He watched her, sitting adjacent to her. Close. "In the Fire Nation, the lady takes the first sip," he indicated, eyebrow raised.

"Oh, 'the lady' does?" Katara smiled. "Okay." It was a good temperature and texture; it swirled around the inside of her mouth. Not bitter, not too sweet; it tasted round and full and _good_ , just very good. She closed her eyes when Zuko followed suit.

They drank in silence for a little while, while the flames grew and shrank. Zuko regarded her neutrally but steadily, smiling a little when she took a sip and hummed her appreciation.

She was struck when the flare and dim of the candles began to match her own breath, but of course she was really breathing in tandem with Zuko, not firebending; still, the effect was undeniably calming and strangely empowering. Synchronous like this, she could sense him again, the water within him: moving and shifting in pulses and waves. She could feel his blood; the rhythm of it tickled the back of her head.

It was not a full moon, she realized suddenly, and froze.

Zuko was looking at her differently now. "Does the breathing bother you?"

"No." She spoke in low tones to match his own. "No, it just—I like it."

"It's a meditation technique. Helps with control," he murmured.

"That's what my forms are for," she said. "With waterbending, you have to move to feel this kind of rhythm."

Zuko lifted his cup to his lips. "I remember you doing that in the mornings. In the gardens at the palace. When you and Aang stayed after the war."

"Those were good months." Katara inhaled deeply as he did. "Politicking. Looking for your mother." She shook her head. "I'm still sorry we never found anything."

Zuko raised a shoulder, as if warding off some small evil. "I feel her watching me, sometimes. As a spirit or, if she's alive—I don't know. But the not-knowing doesn't bother me as much as it used to."

"That's impressive," Katara said honestly. Even finding Yon Rha hadn't given her much closure. When someone is lost—missing or gone, but lost—the search is all that matters. "Azula still speaks to her?"

Zuko nodded. "Occasionally. She's getting better every year. Do you want to see her, when we're back?"

No. No, she did not. Azula made her think of bright light and ozone and fear. Katara had tried to help the princess regain a little bit of her mind after two months of refusing to go near her; some calming waterbending, a lot of healing. It had done some good—she began to recognize Zuko after two weeks of careful work. But it had left Katara weak and upset and dependent, and Azula's gains in sanity hadn't lasted. And above all—the thing that tormented Zuko the most—his sister did not bend.

It was a shocking thing: something in Azula had snapped, and the last bending she'd done was the fire-breathing that had left her sobbing, chained on the grate. Aang had taken Ozai's bending away, but Katara had never been sure of what had taken Azula's.

"Sure," she said at last. "If you think it'll help."

"She always seemed a little better after you worked on her," Zuko said quietly, and Katara could hear the hope in his voice. _No, she didn't._ "I never thanked you properly for those attempts. I know she hurt you."

"It's okay." Azula had lashed out often, especially during the healing sessions—rejecting help. The cup was hot on her fingertips and she wondered if Zuko was warming it, somehow. "I'm a big girl now."

The words slipped out unthinkingly, with no regard for circumstance or company. Zuko spluttered out a laugh. "I can't believe you just said that."

Katara poked at him gleefully. "I can't believe you remember saying that!"

Zuko groaned and tilted his head up to the ceiling. "Please don't remind me."

Katara laughed, breaking the spell of quiet solemnity that had cast over their little tea ceremony. "I beat you for it, anyway."

"I won out in the end," he protested.

"Yes, yes, 'I rise with the sun,' I remember." Katara grinned down at her teacup. "Trounced me."

"It'd be the last time," he said peacefully. "I'm glad you didn't know bloodbending then. You were probably angry enough to use it."

Katara shot a quick look upward and caught his careful glance. He seemed to know she'd been thinking about it. "Have you done any more of it?" he asked quietly.

Her fingers itched, thinking about it. Yes. In secret, in her more sleepless nights, on herself. And last year, when a corpsman had unwisely gone hunting alone and was mauled by a bear, she'd stopped him from bleeding out. She'd told the healers she'd used herbs to staunch the flow. None had questioned her. "No. I couldn't. They're not ready for it." _Aang hates it. I hate it._

Still breathing with him, a bit faster now, Katara could feel Zuko shift before he actually did; and then his arm was around her shoulder. His hand was warm against the bones of her shoulder. He was hugging her like Sokka hugged her. "You don't have to be ashamed of it," he said.

And then, quieter, more hesitant: "You should have come to Caldera ages ago."

"Busy," she said, muffled into his robes. "And I didn't know Mai had left. I would have come if I had. That sounds hard."

"It was." Zuko tightened his grip. "How long can you stay?"

She broke free a little, moving to face him. His hand was still on her neck. "How long?" she repeated.

He immediately shifted away from her and made to fill her cup. "I mean—how long would you like to? I'm not traveling again anytime soon. And if you agree to look at Azula, I mean—it would be good to do a couple of sessions, don't you think?"

He was speaking too quickly. Katara got the sense that she was missing something. "Yes," she said carefully. "It depends on…on a couple of things, I guess. I should still be working while I'm in Caldera. Doing ambassadorial things."

"Right." Zuko nodded at the table. "Koronok will be pleased to see you, I'm sure."

Doubtful; he knew she'd wanted his position, and always seemed frightful that she'd take it from him. "And I, him."

Zuko grinned at her tone. "Diplomatic answer."

* * *

Fire Lord.

He really looked it here, in his royal uniform of armor and crown, disembarking from this royal ship onto the private dock close the palace, grudgingly accepting a palanquin "for safety's sake, my Lord," holding his hand to Katara, handing her bag to one of his attendants, making her step inside first as she bent an umbrella above them all to shield them from one of the season's last storms.

The unyielding rain pattered pleasantly on the roof of the palanquin, and once they got moving it was a lullaby that could have rocked Katara to sleep; but she kept up the shield of ran around the palanquin, where the Fire Lord's retinue walked. Zuko sat across from her as courtesy dictated, but no closer. The thought made her smile—keeping up appearances, even as they'd left a boat undoubtedly full of awful gossip. _They spent many evenings together,_ she could imagine Captain Jee saying over a fire and a drink, eyebrows waggling charmingly. _'Meditating,' allegedly, but I must say, they make a striking pair._

So he had told her, unbidden, one day on the deck, when she had brought her desk up to finish reading the treaty with the autonomous Earth territories. "I am glad to see the Fire Lord has found a worthy friend in you. He has been in need of one."

So, too, had she, but there hadn't been any Captain Jee around to notice her lack of companionship at the South Pole. The five days on the ship had seemed to be a month long: she and Zuko bended together in the morning and sometimes sparred with idle crewmembers; she enjoyed solitary afternoons, working separately and sending off letters and communiques; and dinners were with Captain Jee and the other high-ranking officers, whose stories had her in tears. True, she and Zuko had spent many evenings with each other, and with the candles that moved with their breath. Sometimes they _did_ just meditate, their company enough. Other times, they talked.

Now, Zuko crooked a smile at her. "You don't have to keep up the shield. We're almost there."

"No point in letting it go now," she said, arms still moving. "It's worth a few extra points with your retinue. Your advisers still look at me like I'm a skinny kid covered in Appa's fur."

Zuko chuckled. "They're a tough bunch. But most of them know you by reputation already."

What her reputation meant in the Fire Nation now, Katara wasn't sure. But as the palanquin gently halted and lowered to the ground, and she stepped out into the undecided skies of the Fire Nation capital city, she decided she didn't much care. It was strangely cool, the sky gray and the air full of moisture. She shifted her shield so as to better feel the droplets plucking at the hairs on her arm, the exposed skin of her scalp.

"Honorable Lady Katara," a tall man in dark robes greeted her, bowing under a waxed paper umbrella. "I am Fire Lord Zuko's chief adviser, Shi Daolin. It is my pleasure to welcome you."

"Daolin," Katara said, returning the bow, "thank you for your welcome. I'm sorry to be a surprise visitor."

Daolin had an easy smile. "It was not so surprising, my Lady. The Fire Lord informed us of your presence on the ship before you left Ba Sing Se. We have your rooms ready, and Ambassador Koronok is waiting to welcome you in the palace."

From behind her, Zuko sighed. "Politics never waits. Daolin, you sent on that message to Chief Hakoda?"

"Of course, my Lord. The hawk left yesterday. If you'll follow me, Lady Katara, we'll enter the palace."

Zuko's retinue pouted a bit at the loss of their rain shield. Katara raised her eyebrows. "You sent a message to my father?"

"Asking if he'd like more corpsmen for rebuilding," Zuko said. "We've got an overabundance in the newest class, and too many are being sent to the Earth Kingdom. It's hard to convince them to go to the Poles." He sounded apologetic.

Katara lifted a shoulder in a sort of shrug. "I don't know how much help we need anymore," she said, "but it's good, in general, to have new blood around. Did you know that one of the corpsmen actually got married to a Northern Water Tribe girl last year?" One of the younger ones, who perhaps didn't know the kind of casual hatred that would likely be thrown his way for years to come. Many Fire Nation citizens had no earthly idea of the horrors their nation's armies had imposed.

"Strangely enough, I don't keep up with the life stories of individual corpsmen."

Katara scowled at him.

* * *

Her suite of rooms— _plural_ , she thought, dumbfounded—was larger than her entire home in the South Pole. Daolin showed her through the 'entrance room' for guests, the office for which she was given the only key, and paused delicately at the entrance to the bedroom. "Please make yourself comfortable," he said. "I understand from Fire Lord Zuko that you have a general dislike of service, but there is a bell at the entrance hall by which you may contact the servant's quarters. There are several maidservants assigned to you for the duration of your stay."

"Thank you, Lord Daolin," Katara said, still a little amazed at the _space._ "Would you please tell Koronok that I'll be up to see him in an hour? We can meet in the gardens."

Daolin bowed and left her, leaving Katara to gleefully search the bedroom. An enormous bed, swathed with dark red curtains edged in gold, lay between two expensive-looking glass windows. A rug of polar-bear fur, which she remembered her father gifting to Zuko years ago, brightened the room; to its right was a discrete doorway that led to a bathroom of truly ridiculous size, made of marble and decorated with polished brass. She wondered if Mai had stayed in these rooms when she was the royal consort.

And to think she'd been overwhelmed by the changes to her village. The South Pole still wasn't remotely capable of such wealth. Her father's quarters as chief were hardly nicer than hers—they simply had more guards posted outside.

She wished suddenly for Aang's light humor. He would skip through the rooms and flop on the bed and grin lasciviously at her with a look to the giant marble bathtub. He wouldn't sit on the edge of the bed as she was doing and wail internally at the unfairness of a hundred years of conquest, at the disparities caused by a hundred years of poverty and withdrawal.

But still. Katara felt her lips tighten, remembering the lurching feeling of disappointment she'd felt at returning to her home after six months in Caldera after Ozai's death. It had been a desolate and tiny place, then—so different from the expansive and beautiful world she'd come to know through her travels and her fights. She'd stayed in Ba Sing Se's upper ring, and she'd slept on forest floors, but both seemed more adequate than the cold earthen floors of the village dwellings she'd once thought of as home.

Now, she knew why her father had wanted her back. _He doesn't need you. We do._ They had. And Hakoda hadn't wanted her to become soft, corrupted, a daughter of the Fire Nation palaces. He'd wanted her to keep the hardness she'd worked hard to achieve in war. He'd ordered her to shave her head in the warrior's cut. He wanted her to remember her roots.

Aang had wanted her to stay, too. He'd said it would be good for her to be with her people again. But _what people?_ she'd asked. Her true Tribesmen and Tribeswomen were few and far between, and mostly soldiers scarred by things worse than even she had seen, she who had fought her battles on a higher plane than swords and daggers and the blood they shed. Northern waterbenders came. Corps members soon followed. Katara stayed.

Now she'd escaped into glory and gold. Katara refused to let herself feel ashamed or guilty or wrong. Instead, she breathed deeply through her nose, imagining candles growing and shrinking, and unpacked her bags.

* * *

She'd forgotten that Koronok was a younger man, one of the Northern nobles—in her head, she'd always been old and bleary-eyed, formal with the mannerisms of a hundred years ago. But if he was formal, it was only in writing, for when he saw her cross the gardens he smiled brilliantly and sunk into an elegant bow. Half his dark hair was gathered in a ponytail that reminded her very much of her father. "Master Katara. It's a pleasure to finally meet you in person."

The gardens were misty with continued rain, so he led her to a patio covered completely by the canopies of trees high above them. He'd already ordered tea for them to drink, and though it wasn't Iroh-quality, it was good, and combated the light chill in the air. "I'm happy you've come to Caldera," Koronok said. "I admit that I miss the Poles. It's always good to see one of our people here in the tropics."

Katara hummed. "It was sort of a last-minute visit," she admitted. "I won't inconvenience you at all if you have business to attend to."

"No, I understand, it's a visit between friends," Koronok said. "The Fire Lord is happy to receive you, I'm sure. The Avatar was here recently—it seemed to be a weight off his chest, to see his old friend again."

"Did you get to speak with Aang?"

"Only at the formal dinner they held in his honor," Koronok sighed. "He was subject to all sorts of pageantry and ceremony. I'm sure you will be, too. They enjoy their pomp here."

Katara couldn't help but grin. "If Zuko knows me at all, he'll resist the pageants. I'm not here long, and I'll be doing some negotiating with the autonomous Earth territories soon."

Koronok raised an eyebrow. "Trade deal?"

"Yes. I'm having a hard time getting them to be straight about how they'll be wording this to the Earth Kingdom," Katara said, sighing. Of course her Tribe was already conferring with Kuei and the nobles about the treaty, assuring them that it meant no disrespect on their part, but if the autonomous territories decided to use the treaty to snub trading with the Earth Kingdom, well…all that hard work would be for nothing. "It's hard to tell exactly what they _want._ To actually be economically independent, or just to tell the Kingdom—" Unthinkingly, Katara made a rude hand gesture at the sky.

Koronok spluttered out a laugh. "Probably the latter, although not in so many words. But they still need the Earth Kingdom, despite their bravado. I think it's admirable that they took the opportunity to secede, but I don't think they were fully prepared for the consequences. The post-war world is a different one. Everyone tries so hard to be cooperative, but really all the conquered nations are trying to reestablish some kind of former glory. How 'former' the glory was," Koronok added dryly, "seems not to matter."

Katara frowned. The Northern Tribe always felt like their embarrassment of riches compared to the South was a matter of hard work and worth, not of luck—apparently that attitude spread as far as the Earth Kingdom, as well. "It's not surprising, or deplorable, that we should seek revitalization," she said, trying not to sound too much like a scold to a man who must have been ten years her elder—and failing. "Ambassadorship has made you cynical."

Koronok look startled, then laughed. "You _are_ a delight. I have had the pleasure of meeting your father many times, and often he spoke of your wit. You wished for my place here in Caldera? You would have been worthy of it. But," he said, motioning for a servant to refill their cups, "there's no escaping cynicism in this job. Every citizen with the money to voice their opinion hates you. Everyone in your own country feels like you give too much up to the other. Everyone wonders what your game is, taking the place of one of the heroes of the war."

Katara flushed. "I hope that hasn't made trouble for you—that I wanted the job," she said. "I was much younger. It would have been a disaster." That much, at least, was true. She could barely rein in her tongue at fifteen. She would have started another war. "Dad was right to keep me in-country and learn politics there, first."

Koronok nodded. His eyes were paler than hers: chips of blue-gray ice. "I don't hold anything against you, Master Katara. As I said, I'm happy you're here now, and to meet you in person. It is not my first time being in the presence of legends, but most do not—" And he repeated her rude gesture with a grin— "seem as human as you."

Katara laughed. She'd been determined to dislike this man, who in his communications was so Northern in custom and wording that she couldn't read them without rolling her eyes. But she took a sip of her tea gratefully, smiling at him, and he seemed in turn gratified by her acceptance.

"I know you're here for business and pleasure both, and sure to have a full schedule," Koronok said. "But if you'd like, I'd welcome you to join me in any ambassadorial duties you please. This will likely be your post someday, unless your marriage to the Avatar takes you elsewhere," he said, and Katara's heart suddenly dropped dangerously low, "and I would welcome the chance to be your tutor and companion."

"I don't plan to marry anyone just yet," she said stridently, unthinkingly, ignoring Koronok's questioning look. "And I'd be happy to learn."

* * *

Koronok made good on his promise, and the next day Katara sat in on a meeting with Fire Nation nobles who looked wary of her presence. Mai's father was there—she recognized his snub nose—and looked particularly displeased. But the meeting, which concerned a slight change in the yearly reparations owed to the Northern and Southern Tribes, went surprisingly well, and her questions and comments were well-received.

Katara had puzzled for a little while over her conversation with Koronok, who seemed both welcoming of her presence and a little bitter for it. But his offer to have her sit in on his diplomatic conferences was a generous one, and she'd take it on face value for now. He was right: she still did want the ambassador position, despite the complex mix of shame and longing she felt whenever she entered the palace walls. The Fire Nation was a significant place for her, a reminder of her own growth and change, and of the legacy of justice she'd helped build—such as it was.

She didn't see Zuko again until the afternoon of her fifth day in the Fire Nation. She'd spent the morning twisting through the markets, which were exactly as she remembered them, her favorite fruit vendor in the same spot. She'd bought a mango from him and ate it as she walked, rejecting as politely as possible her assigned handmaiden's offers to cut it and present it on a napkin. Some stopped and stared, faces twisting as if fighting to remember who she was, and some recognized her immediately; but mostly Katara passed in pleasant anonymity, just another Fire Nation woman, albeit one with an unseasonal tan.

On the way back, her handmaiden—whose name, rather unpleasantly for Zuko, was Mei—"written with a different character than that of the Lady Mai's name," she'd hastened to add—had directed her to a side gate of the palace, one close to the markets. Katara, lost in thought and trying to suck the mango juice from her fingers, hadn't been paying attention to where they were entering. And then, suddenly, she did.

She recognized the columns, the covered area for a noble audience. She recognized the lacquered tile roofs, gleaming a new black under the season's steady rainfall. And immediately she recognized the great empty space they framed, the tight dirt courtyard that was the stage for coronation, for royal procession, and for Agni Kai.

The mango pit dropped from her fingers, and a roaring sound filled her ears; Mei turned immediately, attuned to anything wrong with her charge, but Katara couldn't hear her quiet questions. They'd repaired the arena. _Oh, I'll show you lightning._

Zuko stood at the far end of the courtyard. Or no, he wasn't standing—he was kneeling, not in front of the podium and stage where Azula had awaited her crown, but facing the other side, where rows of seats were empty.

No one else was in the dueling ring. And when Mei saw what Katara was staring at she instantly shut up, actually pressing a hand to her mouth, because the Fire Lord did not kneel to anyone, _anyone_ , ever. It was an indictable offense, something that in the old days could have justified a coup. And though Zuko did not kneel in front of anyone in particular, he was clearly kneeling to _something_ : in the rain, which made a fine mist around his armor, submissive to some higher thought, and all alone.

Katara wanted to cry out, but she had no breath. The last time she had seen him like this was in the crystal catacombs under Ba Sing Se, where he'd been forced to his knees by his sister and kept there by his own shame.

The rain must have blocked the sound of their breathing. Zuko placed his fists on the ground in front of him and, in a single, slow movement, used them to balance as he bowed low, his hair falling across the sides of his face in wet strips. His forehead touched the ground.

Who was he bowing to? To Azula, maybe—or to the memory of his Agni Kai against his father? To the pieces of himself that had been lost when lightning had coursed through his blood?

Something fought with the mango in her stomach—she might be sick, but she couldn't move. "Mei," she whispered, "please leave, would you?"

She felt rather than saw her handmaiden scurry away. Katara wanted to watch him a little longer, to see the graceful bend of his back in supplication and sorrow, but Mei's movement must have alerted Zuko to the presence of others—he jolted up from his position, one hand out as if to attack.

His eyes found hers almost immediately, from many meters away. If she'd been in his position she'd have been stuck there, dumbfounded by discovery—but Zuko raised himself with the kind of refinement that made him a Fire Lord, brushing the mud from his knees.

Katara's feet carried her to him before she was aware of having moved. He had a blotch of mud on his forehead from where his royal face had met the dirt. "You've got mud on your forehead."

Zuko didn't move when she directed the falling rain to clean it away. And then she was right in front of him. "I'm sorry," she said blandly, not quite understanding why she felt she had to apologize. "I didn't—that is—I just came in from the markets."

"Oh?" Zuko was a column of dark armor. "How were they?"

"Fine. Good." She was messing with her hair in a self-conscious kind of way. She stopped. "I bought a mango from that fruit vendor I liked years ago."

And then she saw it again: the unseeableness she'd last seen on Jet's face. The widening of Zuko's golden eyes and the twisting of his proud mouth, the fighting-with-self, the losing. She blinked; when her eyes locked onto his again, the moment was gone, and he was impenetrable. Zuko's mouth worked for a moment without opening. "I was—"

She shook her head. _It doesn't matter._ "It doesn't matter. But don't let people see you doing that."

He frowned at that. "I'm not my father. I don't care about the—" He stopped, scowled. "It's not always weakness to acknowledge—"

Katara couldn't help the smile. "Okay."

Zuko lifted a hand, and for an aching moment she saw her mother with the same motion, brushing hair from Katara's face with such tenderness—but Zuko's hand fell to his side, and she adjusted her hair herself.

She ignored the ache. "Come on," she said, and took his hand. "Let's go to the gardens."

* * *

Azula's eyes were amber, gold, yellow, gray. "You're back."

The room—cell—was plush and red, filled with soft things, no edges, no sharpness. Katara's heart jumped. "You noticed I was gone?"

Azula's lofty tone told her, _of course._ "I may be crazy, waterbender—I know what they whisper—" She shot a glare that could have killed at the guard by her door—"but I am still—" She tapped the side of her head with dignity—" _smarter than you._ "

"I don't doubt it." Slowly, Katara brought the bowl of water in front of her, and set it on the oval table that kept her apart from the princess. Behind her, Zuko tensed. Years ago, Azula had detested the sight and feel of water so much that she nearly died of dehydration, refusing to drink it. Bathing her had been a life-threatening exercise. They'd had to bind her. Katara had had to heal some very nasty bruises, because even without fire or lightning to aid her, Azula was a formidable figher.

Six years later, Katara noted, Azula looked much more stable, and stared unflinchingly at the bowl of water. "Has anyone healed you with water since I've been gone?"

Azula snorted, going to look at her again. "A few have tried. You may be filthy, but you were better than _them._ I told Zuzu not to bother, but he never listens."

On edge, Katara nonetheless had to smile. "No, he never does." Carefully, she gathered palmfuls of water to her hands. "Would you mind if I tried again?"

Azula eyed her, then Zuko. Her arms were folded tightly against her chest. "Hasn't Mother told you I'm a lost cause? She tells me all the time, horrid woman. Be glad she doesn't talk to you."

 _Oh._ Even half-lucid, Azula was cruel. Katara chanced a glance back at Zuko, whose face was closed absolutely. "Azula," he rasped, not unkindly, "you always were the favorite."

"She doesn't talk to be because she _likes_ me," Azula spat. With frightening speed, she turned back to Katara. "You may touch me," she said regally.

Katara knelt across the table, ignoring the discomfort—distance was always better, when it came to Azula—and pressed her thumbs to Azula's temples, reminded again of Jet and Lake Laogai. _You're a Freedom Fighter!_

"I'm a princess," Azula murmured, correcting her, and Katara realized she'd whispered it out loud. "Don't forget my cherries."

Behind them, Zuko sighed.

* * *

The dreams were beginning to fall into a predictable pattern, and Katara—though she'd never gotten Sokka's knack for planning and mapping—was beginning to chart their course.

She'd gotten a letter from Aang a week after seeing Zuko kneel in the mud, and angry tears had blurred his words as she read. She'd wanted to tear it into pieces.

 _Katara,_

 _I'm back at the South Pole. Negotiations went well across the board, which is good! but also unfortunate, because I think I'll be away for longer than two weeks the next time around. We're trying to settle on a plot of land near the Earth Kingdom—it might be those autonomous territories. I know you were working on a trade deal with them, and that might have to get postponed while we figure this out._

 _I wish you would have told me you wanted to go on vacation. I'll be here for another week and then head back to the Earth Kingdom after checking on the acolytes in the West. Maybe I'll stop in Caldera after that and visit you and Zuko._

 _I love you, even when you're away._

 _Aang_

I love you, even when you're away. Even. Like she had to be forever _present_ , constantly _available_. I'm sorry you've worked so hard on this trade deal, but I'm going to ignore that for now. Like her work was less important than his, like she was less _capable_ —but that wasn't fair. Of course he hadn't meant it like that. But Aang had the most infuriating tendency to make it sound like inconveniences to him were inconveniences to the universe as a whole, and she—

It had made her angry, and she'd gone to bed angry, and she'd dreamed of a swollen belly again, and furious Avatar eyes and glowing spirits that tongued her cheek and cackled at her misery. _It is destined,_ they said. _Do not turn from what fate has delivered._

Destined. Destined. She'd cracked the ice and found him, and from then her life had been written, signed, sealed. That was unfair. That was frightening.

Then there were the dreams that truly scared her. These came after an evening with Zuko or Koronok or both, drinking tea or something stronger under the stars, talking politics and Water Tribe custom. Koronok had commented on her necklace once and misidentified the material of the band. "Seal leather is traditional in the Northern Tribe—I see that's what you have, too."

"It's dyed bearskin," Zuko had corrected suddenly.

She and Koronok had both stared at him. "How do you know that?" she'd demanded.

"I had that necklace for a long time," he'd said with a too-casual shrug. "I know what it feels like."

And that night she'd dreamed of his fingers on her neck, thumbing the leather, flipping up the engraved disc to press his lips to the tenderest part of her throat and then kneeling in the rain, back to her, bowed like an instrument's chord pulled taut. And Jet again, for whatever reason, his hands on her waist and the smell of woodsmoke.

Those frightened her the most, yes.

But the most beautiful—the ones after which she could not fall back asleep—were after she visited Azula. In her dreams, the princess was surrounded by lightning, which came from her fingertips and traveled across centuries to touch Katara's forehead with the precision and care of a mother's kiss. _Zuzu, you don't look so good._

After one night of that dream, Katara woke slowly, blinking at the crimson trappings of her bed. She'd kept the drapes open so that the moon, close to full, could reach her skin. Now it gleamed like an eye, and she stared back at it owlishly.

She felt her blood thrum.

The corpsman she'd bloodbent had been in too much pain to understand what she'd done to keep him alive. But she too-well remembered the hitch in his breath and body when she'd taken control of his blood, the way the life of him had curled to her command. She'd done it out of desperation, because she was the one who had found him and because it had been a full moon and she knew, somewhere, that it was the only way to save his life.

Inside, she'd heard Hama cackling. But Yue's warm cool light had bathed her in something that felt awfully like approval.

Katara's feet hit the floorboards with night's quietness, and she dressed mechanically, pulling on a cloak, soft sandals, thumbing her necklace.

A year of stealth and secrecy came back to her quickly as she darted down the hallways of the palace. There was the royal wing, where Zuko slept alone in a sea of empty rooms. There was the hallway that led to Daolin's quarters. There were the kitchens, with a servant stumbling groggily out—she pressed herself against the wall, quiet and still, until he passed. There were the stairs to the wine cellar, where Zuko had called her young, where the air was laced with sweetness.

Here was the guarded room where Azula slept. Only one guard on duty tonight. Zuko must trust his sister not to leave—or maybe, after all this time, she'd forgotten that she could.

The guard swiveled to face her. "Master Katara. You're up late."

She ducked her head. "Waterbender with a near-full moon," she said, smiling tightly. "I wanted to visit the princess for a healing session."

The guard raised his eyebrows. "I don't think she'd be too keen on a nighttime visitor. She doesn't sleep much."

"Then she won't mind," Katara said brusquely, sounding much more confident than she felt. "You can stay outside."

The guard looked at her warily, but shrugged and fiddled with the lock. He'd doubtless tell Zuko tomorrow, but what of it? He'd asked her to help. She would help. "Let me know if you need anything."

"Thank you," Katara said, and breezed through the door into darkness.

The door clicked shut behind her. The room was devoid of light except for a slim window from which the moon shone, making Azula's profile into a silhouette. She was sitting near the window, watching the outside like a cat. "Waterbender," the princess said from her perch. "What are you doing here?"

Katara stood at a loss for a moment. "I…came to try something new, if you'd let me."

Azula turned to regard her, though Katara couldn't see her gaze. Her heart seemed to beat loudly in the closed space.

"I've never tried it with you before," Katara continued, "but I think it could help. I've seen with the water…well, nothing I do with the water actually fixes you."

"What is there to fix?"

A trick question, almost. She couldn't exactly say, _you're crazy and you need to stop being crazy._ Katara took a breath. "Well. You lost your bending."

"You want to help _me_ bend again?"

Azula sounded rightfully skeptical, and Katara couldn't help but laugh a little. "I know, I know. But I think it might help you in other ways, too."

The princess seemed to consider this. "I see," she said after a moment. "My head." A pause. "Does Zuzu know you're doing this?"

"No," Katara said firmly. "Not yet. But not because he wouldn't say yes, just because it's easier at night—"

Azula shot up from the window with such speed and force that Katara almost took a step back. "It is not his decision," she spat. "It is mine."

"It won't be comfortable."

In the moonlight, Azula might have smirked. "You cannot hurt me."

 _Not anymore than I am already hurt._ Katara sighed. Shucked off her cloak. From the window, Yue seemed to nod at her. _This is right, this is right, this is right._

Azula's blood was surprisingly steady, but then, her body wasn't the trouble. Without warning, Katara placed her hands in front of her, fingers pointing at the princess. She could feel the steady thump of life and red and fire at her fingertips, which sparked with feeling and connection. Threads of understanding linked her fingers with Azula's blood—twined inside the veins—fought past gravity and pressure and love and twisting despair and a thousand other otherworldly forces, and Katara felt sweat bead at her hairline as she pushed forth to reach the crown of Azula's head, where the water in her body sludged, stagnant, pillowy-thick, full.

Azula gasped an "oh." Katara pulled and pulled and pulled, fingers plucking.

Hot and alien: the smell of ozone. A comet streaking across the sky, granting immeasurable power, taking the life from half the earth. Katara imagined it arcing over the horizon with horror in its wake. Imagined Azula's blue fire, bluer lightning, the white of her eyes. Sobbing—Azula was sobbing. Or maybe she was. Or maybe both.

* * *

She woke up to Zuko.

He was disheveled, long hair mussed, dressed only in short pants and a robe that he hadn't bothered to tie securely. The scar his sister had given him was a star on his stomach, puckered over with years of shedding old skin. He was sitting on the edge of her bed, sipping tea and staring out the window like Azula had done during the night. Early sun was turning the sky at the bottom of her window a light purple. He'd circled her bed with clumps of candles which were moving steadily up and down, in time with his breath.

Her hands ached. She moved to sit up and Zuko turned his attention to her immediately. His gaze was forbidding, but not angry; he looked at her like she had rearranged her face, and he had to work to understand the pieces. "How long have you been here?" she asked hoarsely.

He handed her a cup of tea. "Four hours. Since the guard found you and Azula collapsed on the floor."

Katara winced. "Is Azula okay?"

Zuko considered her carefully, and Katara felt the bed drop away from underneath her. "She's fine," he said after a moment. "Great, actually. She woke up as soon as I got to her room and told me that my hair looked like an ostrich-horse's feathers."

Katara didn't smile. "Is she…can she…"

"She can't bend." Zuko took a sip. "She told me you'd tried. Did you bloodbend?"

She pressed her lips together. "Yes," she blurted. "I'm sorry, I should have told you, but it came to me so suddenly—I dreamed of her, and I just—I understood." Katara forced herself to breathe slowly. "There's nothing to _heal_ in her; the physical stuff will have to come naturally. But there's this swelling and blockage that I can feel with the blood, like somehow her body is keeping itself from circulating chi properly, I don't know, I…It felt, when I was in there, like a stronger hit from Ty Lee, like something just shut down. And I think I can fix it."

Zuko watched her mouth with uncommon attention.

"Are you angry?" Her voice sounded plaintive.

"No," Zuko said, "but you should have told me. I don't know—I don't know."

There was much there. _I don't know if she can be trusted. I don't know if she should have her bending back. I don't know why you did it. I don't know why you didn't tell me. I don't know what to do._

Katara licked her lips. Dry. "I don't know what will make her happier," she said earnestly. "But she can't be happy like this. And if she wants me to continue, I—I will. The rest of it—the trust—that's you."

Zuko's grip on his cup seemed to tighten, but he leaned over and looked at her fully for the first time. "Thank you. Thank you. You can—you can stay as long as you like, you know." He paused, looking at her as if for response, but she had nothing. "I know you don't have that trade deal stuff right now. You can stay and work with Koronok and live here. If you want."

Katara felt herself blink at him. "Zuko, it's—"

"The gardens are beautiful right now," he spat, sounding furious. "The rains. Everything is green. Plenty of water. And you can help Azula. And it's—it'll be my birthday soon. I know you like polar winters, so—maybe—until the summer ends. You could stay until then. The end of the summer."

The flames climbed and receded. Katara felt struck dumb. She sat stiller than she thought she could. Zuko looked like he could gladly pitch himself into the sea.

Katara swallowed. "I'll have to go home at some point."

"Why?"

"Well—because—" She frowned at him. "I have a job there. I help my people. And Aang." Aang, what? "Aang comes back to the South Pole. He…I can't stay here, not when—I have a house there." She was making no sense, but Zuko was hanging on her every word. "I know I need a break, but the end of the summer is—is months away, still. I told my dad I'd be home in a month." She spread her fingers on the coverlet with what she hoped was an air of finality. She'd been in the Fire Nation for four weeks already. "I should go home soon. After I help with Azula."

Inexplicably, Zuko laughed. Hollowly. This time, when his hand moved to her face, he did sweep a strand of hair from her eyes. His fingers were warm. "I'm not being clear," he said, frustrated. "It's not just Azula. Katara." He paused. " _I_ would like it if you stayed."

And there, again: his eyes glimmering with dawnlight and candlelight and his thumb on her mother's necklace. Katara felt her face heat and her hands shake. Bloodbending Azula had been like being struck by lightning a thousand times over. But this was not a dream. Fire Lord Zuko had his fingers in the soft fuzz of her shaved neck and a terrible two inches lay between them.

Katara opened her eyes—she hadn't realized she'd closed them. "Zuko." She swallowed. "Aang."

And she wished she hadn't said it, because pain shot across his eyes in quick strikes. "I've betrayed the Avatar before," he said roughly. A bad joke. A horrible joke. But he left the inches between them, and the pain in his face only increased when she didn't move, didn't pull away or come closer, left him still in his own warmth.

 _I haven't._ But she came to Caldera. She dreamed of his hands on her lips. She was the one, now, closing the terrible gap, skirting her lips on his once, twice, three times, four, as if the more she kissed him the less she would think of Aang, the boy in the ice, the boy with a hand on her belly, the boy who would paint arrows on her arms.

The fifth kiss was Zuko's.


End file.
